News

Madin Natok, second-year student of HSE University’s Business Informatics programme, has spent the last decade playing basketball. This season, he was named the best young player in the Russian 3×3 Championship, and he is now preparing for an international tournament in China as part of the Russian U21 national team. In this interview with the HSE News Service, Madin spoke about sports, studies, and the upcoming tournament.

Gordey Morozov, student of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), came to HSE for an exchange semester as part of the incoming international student mobility programme. Studying on the International Programme 'International Relations and Global Studies,' he shared why he decided to come to Moscow and spoke on the differences between education processes in Russia and Germany, how studying at HSE University changed his perspective, and why it’s important to be outgoing among your teachers and classmates.

Researchers from the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences have shown that the accuracy of birth rate forecasts for Russia can be improved by almost 50% by incorporating the dynamics of online search queries related to pregnancy and childbirth into forecasting models. In the best-performing models, the forecasting error fell from 4.6% to 3.2%. The findings have been published in Populations and Economics.

In an experiment involving 15 healthy men, scientists at HSE University investigated how different phases of the cardiac cycle influence the excitability of the motor cortex when participants viewed either their own photograph or the faces of strangers. The researchers found that when participants looked at their own image, the brain’s response to signals from the heart was weaker, meaning that the influence of cardiac activity on the motor cortex decreased. This finding came contrary to expectations, as self-focused attention was thought to enhance the brain's sensitivity to internal bodily signals. The study has been published in Frontiers in Signal Processing.

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Arctic Studies at the Institute for Economics of Natural Resources and Climate Change organised HSE University's first summer school on international relations in the Svalbard archipelago. Alongside lectures and fieldwork, 14 participants from Russia and South Korea developed practical solutions for implementing multilateral cooperation projects in the Arctic.

Lin Meiran, an exchange student, spent the autumn semester at HSE University–St Petersburg. She took courses on game theory, artificial intelligence, and generative models and explored the cultural side of the city and made new friends. Read on to find out why HSE University–St Petersburg is a great destination for exchange students.

Alessandro Locatelli, from Florence, Italy, is a third-year student of the Bachelor's in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication at the HSE School of Foreign Languages. In his interview with the HSE News Service, he reflects on why it’s important to integrate a cultural dimension into language learning, what makes HSE lecturers special, and how curiosity motivated his decision to study in Russia.

HSE University and the Russia Renewable Energy Development Association (RREDA) have signed a partnership and information cooperation agreement to support Renewable Energy of the Planet—2026, a national competition with international participation for students and early-career researchers. Applications are open on the competition's website until September 20, 2026.